Average Follow-up Time DetailFollow-up assessment 3 years after baseline.

Exposure DetailNon-drinkers (No more than 1 drink per week)Mild (at least 2 drinks per week but no more than 250 ml [2 standard glasses] per day)Moderate (between 250 and 500 ml of alcoholic beverage [3 to 4 standard glasses] per day)Heavy (more than 500 ml [5 standard glasses and up] per day)

Structured questionnaire. Wine, beer, and liquor drinking were recorded separately.

Subjects classified as: "- non drinkers if they did not drink any alcoholic beverage or no more than one drink per week; - mild drinkers if they drank at least 2 drinks per week but no more than 250 ml (2 standard glasses) per day; - moderate drinkers if they drank between 250 and 500 ml of alcoholic beverage (3 to 4 standard glasses) per day; - heavy drinkers if they drank more than 500 ml (5 standard glasses and up) per day."

"Wine was the only alcoholic beverage reported by more than 95% of regular drinkers." (Thus only wine results are reported).

Age DetailCalculated from average across the categories of wine consumption for 2273 persons in longitudinal analysis:74.2 years of age = [74.1*971 (none) + 74.9*922 (mild) + 72.9*318 (moderate) + 72.5*62(heavy)] / 2273.

"Cognitive functioning was assessed through a battery of psychometric tests which included : the Benton Visual Retention Test (Benton, 1965), the Zazzo's Cancellation Test (Zazzo, 1974), the Isaacs Stet Test for verbal fluency (Isaacs and Kennie, 1973), the Wechsler paired associates test and the Wechsler digit-symbol test (Wechsler, 1981). The global cognitive status was assessed with the Mini- Mental State Examination (MMSE) (Folstein et al., 1975). Prevalent and incident cases of dementia were evaluated through the DSM-III-R criteria (American Psychiatric Association, 1987), using the results of the cognitive battery administered by the visiting psychologist. Self perceived health (Idler et al., 1990) and mental depression with the CES-D scale (Radloff, 1977), were assessed at the end of the interview. Diagnosis of dementia and the allocation of cases as probable AD or non-AD types of dementia were made by the participating neurologists with the NINCDS-ADRDA criteria for AD (McKhann et al., 1984) and a clinical vascular dementia score (Hachinski et al., 1974)."

Covariates & Analysis DetailAnalysis Type:Logistic regression

"The main dependent variable was the presence or absence of incident dementia (i.e. excluding cases diagnosed at baseline and patients not available for follow-up because of death or other reasons) at 3 years follow-up. Secondary dependent variables were the presence of AD, total mortality and institutionalization at 3 years."